WoW Diary Kickstarter - A Book Covering Vanilla WoW's Dev Cycle

John Staats, WoW's first 3D level designer, has started a kickstarter for WoW Diary, a book covering WoW from early development to Vanilla's launch.\r\rCheck out the WoW Diary Kickstarter for more info!\r\rEdit: This Kickstarter is being revamped to have a lower target and longer fundraising period:\rYeah, this campaign isn't going to happen. LOL. I had some really bad advice. I'll reboot it with 1\/10th of a target and give it 30 days to clear. Thanks for your support. If you sign up to to my email list, I'll send a notice to you when it begins again. (And I promise not to spam you with constant updates).\r\rA veteran of WoW's development, John Staats in vanilla designed and built Ahn\u2019Qiraj Temple, Blackfathom Deeps, Blackwing Lair, Blackrock Mountain, Blackrock Depths, Booty Bay, Karazhan (w\/Aaron Keller), Loch Modan Dam, Lower Blackrock Spire, Molten Core, Razorfen Downs, Razorfen Kraul, Scholomance, The Slag Pit, Upper Blackrock Spire, The Wailing Caverns, and Warsong Gulch (w\/Matt Milizia). \r\rWhen John first joined Blizzard Entertainment, he was unfamiliar with the games industry and took copious notes on everything he learned and even interviewed his teammates. These detailed notes serve as the basis for this new book! This book includes not just essays on game development and fun anecdotes about the WoW team, but over 130 annotated images printed on high-quality paper stock. \r\rThe book will be available to Kickstarter backers first, with pledges starting at $40, and then later on Amazon. If you're an avid WoW player with fond memories of the early days, or want to learn more about the games industry in the hopes of joining it one day, this book definitely seems for you!\r\rExcerpts\rJohn's personal site, whenitsready, has a few excerpts of the book available. These cover Blizzard office culture, mishaps filming an in-game trailer, and early Molten Core testing including the moment everyone learned they had to kill the lava hounds at the same time.\r\rI\u2019d be remiss to omit my initial reaction to Blizzard\u2019s development area. The Team 2 area was a dump, decorated like someone\u2019s basement. At a glance down the hallway, I could see that half of their florescent lights in the ceiling were burned out. The closest thing to a kitchen was a tiny microwave next to a sink filled with dirty dishes. Food stains, blackened with age, had been ground into the carpet. The halls were littered with spent halogen floor lamps and torn cardboard boxes filled with discarded toys and books. The conference tables were cluttered with soda bottles and stacks of unused condiments, and these tables were orbited by a graveyard of broken and unmatched office chairs. A set of black leather couches faced haphazard angles with no purposeful direction. The walls were covered with dog-eared posters, and every desk and shelf was laden with dusty statues and action figures. People walked around wearing shorts and flip-flops. All evidence indicated this was not an ego-driven environment, and it struck me as a very comfortable place\u2014a person could just plop down and get to work. These offices were so dissimilar from Madison Avenue that I wondered how I would fit in. I didn\u2019t even own jeans or sneakers; all my clothes were work related (slacks, dress shoes). Was it possible that this casual atmosphere shared the same work ethic as the career-driven culture I knew from in Manhattan?\r\r\u201cEverybody get back to their places!\u201d Mark Kern shouted down the hallway. After spending two hours filming a scene of characters running together downhill, everyone\u2019s patience was stretched thin. A dozen or so people were trying to film scenes for a gameplay trailer (to accompany our announcement), and no one liked the results. \u201cGet ready! One, two, three\u2014go!\u201d After a few moments, groans and recriminations erupted. \u201cWho didn\u2019t go?! We have two people not running!\u201d Onlookers quietly chuckled and shook their heads at the debacle. Shane Dabiri was on the other side of the building, filming in a cinematics office. Someone leaned into Shane\u2019s temporary recording studio and explained that not all the actors in the game had speakerphones. Once again, shouts carried through the office hallway directing the actors to return to their places. While the programmers shut their doors, the easily distracted artists gathered to watch the train wreck but just as quickly grew bored watching the process. Like movies and television, the majority of time spent on a film set wasn\u2019t spent filming\u2014it was an exercise in waiting for everyone to get ready.\r\rOn the screen about a dozen or so team members had orc and human characters dressed in our newest armor pieces. Devs considered it cool to be in-the-know about the latest features, cheats, and art assets, so everyone was on the lookout for the latest fashion statements. If someone knew about a new helmet, they\u2019d put it on to show off.\r\rNews traveled to Shane\u2019s makeshift studio that someone had crashed and couldn\u2019t log back on to the server and there was no way to know how long it would take for them to get back into the game. He talked into his phone, which was conferenced to half of the actors. \u201cThere are too many orcs, some of you guys have to be human!\u201d After a brief standoff, someone relented and changed to a human character. \u201cWe need to get the sun on the horizon!\u201d someone said on the speakerphone. \u201cShane, make sure you reset the time of day before you yell \u2018action.\u2019\u201d\r\rWe learned after losing an entire day to filming that we needed a smoother camera. Our game\u2019s frame rate was great, but the in-game camera was designed for playing, not filming, and its jittery mouse-controlled movements didn\u2019t look very slick. Days later, after the programmers delivered a smoother joystick-controlled camera, the footage was reshot, yet the results only supplied a few seconds of in-game footage.\r\rWith exactly one month until the manufacturer had our game on the shelves, the designers began testing the Molten Core\u2019s boss fights internally with forty or so developers from both Teams 1 and 2. The laughable Alterac Valley tests looked coordinated compared to the early raid tests, despite all the debriefing and instructions given. While the designers described each fight in chat (which was ignored), people got bored and made choo-choo sounds prompting others (who found it annoying) to tell them to stop\u2014which only encouraged more choo-choos. Players barely buffed one another, and all communication was done in chat, there was neither voice software or raid interface whatsoever: Players could see health bars of only immediate party members.\r\rJeff used the DPS meters (damage-per-second trackers, beta add-ons built by fans because we didn\u2019t have internal tools for the job) to measure the combat numbers. Our volunteer group couldn\u2019t pass the trash mobs (mobs were mobile monsters, and trash indicated the rewards for killing them were disposable; hence, trash mobs were \u201cfiller\u201d monsters before the boss encounters) without wiping out, so we didn\u2019t even try a boss fight. Even though we wiped (when all forty members died) to every \u201cpull\u201d of combat, Jeff got useful data and took screenshots of the DPS output and combat logs before he moved us on to the next trash mob. Many of us were incredulous that players would be able to kill these monsters. In chat he typed out: \u201cTrust me. Organized raids will be able to get past this content easily.\u201d Between fights, Jeff typed out brief descriptions of the combat mechanics to the unruly group, although there was scant evidence anyone was reading his instructions.\r\rIn subsequent raid tests, we confronted our first boss, the lava hounds (we sometimes could kill trash mobs in the tests that followed, but we still lost half of the raid on every pull). Some people forgot to repair their gear after dying so often. After Jeff explained that all the lava hounds needed to be killed within seconds of one another, many of us cheered and typed our approval. We were thrilled to learn WoW was going to have content this difficult. It felt as though we weren\u2019t working on a Blizzard game anymore. Jeff continued to reassure the other developers: \u201cTrust me, once the raiders figure this out, it will be trivial.\u201d\r\rImages\r\r\r\r\r\r\r

Commenti

Commento di TheAmadaun

This is really cool! $400,000, though... That seems overly ambitious for a two-week kickstarter that didn't have prelaunch hype.

Commento di perculia

on 2018-03-29T23:34:50-05:00

This is really cool! $400,000, though... That seems overly ambitious for a two-week kickstarter that didn't have prelaunch hype.\r\rI'm curious about that as well. I wonder if Blizz might promote it though, since Licensing and Legal approved this project?

Commento di Arraya

on 2018-03-29T23:36:33-05:00

Jesus, Mary and Joseph... those Undead and Night Elf females in the last picture look hideous!\r\rIt's nice to see old, old development notes!

Commento di Azurai

on 2018-03-29T23:45:04-05:00

Yea but why you need 400,000 tho....

Commento di perculia

on 2018-03-29T23:52:55-05:00

Yea but why you need 400,000 tho....\r\rIt's a large book (basically a textbook) with photography-quality paper and fancy ink printing due to the size and details of the images. I believe the Kickstarter says that the paper alone is half the cost. There's a section towards the end of it talking about the costs.

Commento di willange

on 2018-03-29T23:55:44-05:00

As someone who has seen a lot of KS, that's way too much to ask for so little hype, so little time, and not being a boardgame with minis!

Commento di Dragonjts

on 2018-03-29T23:57:43-05:00

Jesus, Mary and Joseph... those Undead and Night Elf females in the last picture look hideous!\r\rIt's nice to see old, old development notes!\r\rI see why the came up with the well fed buff

Commento di Nissarevane

on 2018-03-30T00:00:22-05:00

no South Africa on the list of countries :( BOO

Commento di TheAmadaun

on 2018-03-30T00:02:32-05:00

I decided to kick anyway, because while I seriously doubt this project will succeed at the scale he envisions, I'd like the book to exist and by pledging money, I show that I'm interested in what he's got.\r\rMaybe he'll come back later and just sell the PDF edition, I dunno.

Commento di Veyska

on 2018-03-30T00:44:34-05:00

I decided to kick anyway, because while I seriously doubt this project will succeed at the scale he envisions, I'd like the book to exist and by pledging money, I show that I'm interested in what he's got.\r\rMaybe he'll come back later and just sell the PDF edition, I dunno.Likewise. (I'd almost rather a PDF version, but oh the horror I might end up with a physical copy of what looks to be an interesting read... :-P )

Commento di AlexCri

on 2018-03-30T01:56:24-05:00

The sad reality is, this will never happen. Fully flushed out games dont get this much money... for a book, that is basically impossible... and further more the timeframe is 14 days, that makes is def not happening. As much as i love dev diaries and behind the scenes documentaries and wow, and that this would be the motherload of all behind the scenes wow vanilla documentaries, its really sad too see it kickstarted by someone who clearly does not know how hard it is to get a project succesfully backed on this platform. It should have been made out of cheep materials and\/or direct digital release and the kickstarter started close to wow classic release. Maybe he expects or has a deal with blizz that if it reaches a specific goal blizz will pay the rest of the money... who knows.

Commento di jimbobaus

on 2018-03-30T02:31:40-05:00

I tagged wowhead in a tweet about this a few days ago. Glad to see it\u2019s being Promoted here. Love to see this book get of the ground and succeed.

Commento di ohmyforce

on 2018-03-30T03:14:24-05:00

no South Africa on the list of countries :( BOO\r\rHopefully you'll be covered when the book launches later on Amazon!\r\rI may reach more locations and reduce shipping charges after the book becomes available on Amazon.com in summer 2018.

Commento di Scraleos

on 2018-03-30T05:32:25-05:00

I would have loved to Kickstart this, but $400,000 is just way too much for the goal. If it were an easier goal to achieve, I would 100% back this.

Commento di Laithas

on 2018-03-30T06:51:58-05:00

This is really cool! $400,000, though... That seems overly ambitious for a two-week kickstarter that didn't have prelaunch hype.\r\rTotally agree with this, especially since the list of countries it'll be shipped to is quite limited. This is a cool idea, but unfortunately it'll most likely just stay on the idea stage.

Commento di Coldleo

on 2018-03-30T07:02:37-05:00

I want one for Overwatch, I want to see what was supposed to be an MMO into a shooter game.

Commento di Automag

on 2018-03-30T08:23:26-05:00

Kinda confused why one would go this route to publish a book....

Commento di Nachoslayer

on 2018-03-30T08:49:23-05:00

If a physical copy won't get funded he could try a digital book. Probably a lot cheaper and I bet many designers and developers would be interested in reading this book.

Problem with printing good quality book is that it is extremely expensive (they don't use normal paper and ink that you would use for a normal printer at home). As a desktop publisher I can assure you that the price is probably justified, but if it will get funded is a different matter.

Commento di Brawph

on 2018-03-30T09:23:37-05:00

It would be nice if he explained what part of the "Canadian Heritage Act" (which seems to be many different pieces of legislation) prevents him from shipping a book to Canada... I've never had problems with US kickstarters shipping before, especially ones that use Amazon distribution as he says he's going through :\/\r\rI'll back anyway, just to get updates, especially since it'll probably never get the goal in so little time. Sucks that he won't do a digital version for non-shippable regions, I really want this book!

Commento di kingrow

on 2018-03-30T10:59:02-05:00

https:\/\/twitter.com\/johnstaats\r\rThe guy's twitter is golden, tho.\r\r"My mentat eyebrows were getting into my eyes. I trimmed them down. Is that gay? It felt gay, but I'm not sure."